You've all probably seen many of these. But I'll try to make it simple.

I want to start making ACTUAL Manga. I already have a great story thought up. Now I'm just trying to figure out is it worth going down that path?

Tell me different things like.

o Should I take up drawing classes? (I've been drawing for years)

o Should I even start down the path of a Manga Artist?

o Could I just be a short Comic Maker better than a full fledge Manga Artist?

o If I do want to get reconized, where should I show off my books?

o Whats a good price to buy good drawing Material?

o What should I use to ink my rough sketches.

Pretty much anything you think that would help please give me some advice! I'm determined and will aim for it. Right now its a hobby..but if I complete the book (Which I can) What should I do?

Please Help!

Do you have two of these threads or am I going crazy...

Yes, learn anatomy. Even if it isn't through paid classes, you have plenty of resources in books and videos and online.

If you want to.

If you want to. If you like the story telling format of short comics over long manga series.

Buying bulk items can be a lot cheaper, but good material will cost a good amount of money. Copic markers are $6-7 for ONE marker. I own a $300 basic copic marker set I use all the time, it saved around $100 ordering it as a set online versus buying them all individually. For the handful of skin toned markers I use it's probably around $25-30 for just the couple I need for that alone. While your learning and practicing you do not need top of the line materials. Plenty can be done with less expensive brands.

Show off everywhere. Websites all over the place can help you get your name out. Try making a short comic book (maybe 5-10 pages) and see if your local comic store will let you display them out for customers to take for free. It will let you get your name out there and get attention. The comic shop I go to has a small shelf specifically for local area artists to cheaply sell their mini-comics.

Whatever you want. I mostly use a set of Prismacolor pens that have different sized pen nibs but I also occasionally use an ink well and pen nib set.

Have you ever drawn a comic? I mean, really tried to, paying attention to composition, pacing, the merging of storytelling and art? If you haven't, I suggest you choose a short story and try to draw a comic about it. That should give you a fair idea of how naturally drawing comics comes to you. If drawing that short comic feels like torture, maybe you should reconsider. If it comes naturally and feels enjoyable, go for comic-making. Even if you are not that good. Skills can only be honed through practice, and you might be great in five years.

As for drawing classes, take them. Even if you've drawn for years, you might learn useful tips etc. Besides, when you draw for yourself, you easily slip into routines. For example, always drawing faces at a 3/4 angle. You have also only mentioned drawing the characters. A comic artist should be fairly good at drawing everything that might show up in the comic. Can you draw backgrounds? Urban settings, suburban settings, rural settings? How about three different looking cars? A coffee pot, a chair, a hairdryer? In a comic, the backgrounds matter. You don't want your characters to exist in a limbo, but neither should your backgrounds eat your characters. The more you already can draw, the less there'll be searching for references when you're drawing the comic, thus leaving more effective drawing time. Classes are not necessary, but then you'll have to challenge yourself and get critique from somewhere else.

Those are some things to consider and should give you a fair idea of how hard even making a comic can be, let alone publishing it, getting recognition, scheduling your days to include both comicmaking and a supportive job (if you're thinking of making a career in comics). It's not easy, but if you like it enough, why not try to go for it.

And remember, equipment does not make an artist. An ugly painting is an ugly painting even if it's painted with the most expensive oils you can find. Learn to use basic equipment, learn what you want them to do and only then buy those expensive superawesome markers or whatnot. You can have a $500 pencil and not be able to draw one straight line. It's you who are drawing, not the expensive pencil.

$300 for one Marker? Wow, thanks for the tip! Some people say I should learn to draw realism. I'm really more of a cartoonist though. So I'm not sure what to do first.

Quote:

Originally Posted by JasonTerror

No no no. That's $300 for a SET of markers. It's a box (usually a box) that has a bunch of colors in it..

^It was $300 for a marker SET, and $7-8 for single markers.

If I am paying $300 for a single marker that thing better make gold.

/snicker/

Realism ties into cartooning and it's necessary to have a grasp on realistic human anatomy to develop as an artist. That doesn't mean you draw exclusively realism, it means you work on developing a realistic understanding of the human body.

Every manga artist, cartoonist, and comic book artist that's successful has an understanding of realistic human anatomy. It doesn't matter how cartoony or anime their preferred style of art is, they've worked for YEARS developing realistic grasps on the human body before developing their unique style.

This piece was done around a year ago in the summer. It took me ages to do at the time. You can see huge issues with the proportioning and anatomy, her head is too big for her tiny neck and her torso looks shrunken compared to her head. Eye spacing, nose to mouth size, over all composition, just about everything in this looks really distorted and wrong.

A few months later I drew this.

This was the second full bodied character I ever drew, one of the rare times I even tried drawing hands and feet, and after studying the body and proportioning. It's not perfect by any means, I think the pose is a bit stiff all things considered and her top looks more painted on then having appropriate movement with her body (a problem I see a lot of anime/realism artists doing lately, where clothing may be painted beautifully but looks as if it's painted on the skin with no sense of movement). But you can see a significant improvement between the two pictures, even though they are both done in a comic/cartoon style things are proportionately better and make more sense as a whole. It doesn't even look like the same person drew the two pictures.

Do you need to pay for expensive art classes? No.

Do you need to develop a solid understanding of realistic human anatomy and the way the body moves outside of anime styles? Absolutely.

Don't let people tell you otherwise. Especially if they themselves are not in a place to be giving inaccurate artistic advice.

Thanks Both of you! So I'm going to keep practicing but also I'm going to start doing rough comics for the actual thing. I can draw backgrounds fairly well, I can also draw other objects from memory with not much effort and they will come out decent. If I actually focused they'd look pretty good.

I'm mainly having a trouble with Hands. Feet I can do, Head, Hair and Eyes I can also do well. Body Portion isn't hard, I can do that if I make the light skeleton outline first. I don't know how to really get hands right every single time or how to put them in different positions.

__________________You've only Lost once you've given up on your dream! - PlayerOne

Thanks Both of you! So I'm going to keep practicing but also I'm going to start doing rough comics for the actual thing. I can draw backgrounds fairly well, I can also draw other objects from memory with not much effort and they will come out decent. If I actually focused they'd look pretty good.

I'm mainly having a trouble with Hands. Feet I can do, Head, Hair and Eyes I can also do well. Body Portion isn't hard, I can do that if I make the light skeleton outline first. I don't know how to really get hands right every single time or how to put them in different positions.

Hands are often considered the most difficult and I believe it's because we see our own hands every day and are acutely familiar with how they should and shouldn't look. If you break down hands into basic lines and shapes it will help you to block them in with more detail.

Here's a quick example I threw together using just a random basic open palmed hand:

Using guidelines and basic shapes you can quickly map out the general idea of the hand and from there build on top of it in more detail and adjusting it as you go. The fingers I draw just as little 'tubes' without any detail so I can adjust their placement/length/pose easily without being locked into something specific.

The line above is the line where I draw the tips of the fingers, since each finger length is different this doesn't mean all my fingers will be drawn matching the length of that line; it's just for general placement. The line in the center of the hand helps me indicate where the fat of the 'butt' of the hand to the thumb goes; that fat squishy part of your palm that connects to your thumb. You can also divide the fingers with more joints using the same method as the curved line at the top. For manga the detail of joints in the fingers is usually absent except during closeups of the hands so for the most part I doubt you'd be dividing the hand into joints for that purpose but it's still useful to learn.

Also remember that completely flat palms like the image used here is NOT normally something people do naturally. When resting your hand it cups slightly and you have to make an effort to keep your palms flat like that image. Drawing hands in a lot of different positions is going to help you out a LOT.

Try to do as many positions as possible as often as you can, it doesn't matter if you just do very quick basic layouts like the one I did or if you do super detailed ones. The more you practice the better you get and eventually you won't need to use a *reference.

*even very experienced artists use references sometimes! They're not bad to use, it's just important not to have references as a crutch for what your doing.

Edit:

I think this example might help demonstrate what I was talking about in a more realistic way then the little collage I put together above:

Here in the above image is my rough layout (wire frames are on a separate layer I have turned off)with her hands blocked in very basically.

In the lower image is the beginning of the lineart for her and I've used the very basic blocked in shapes for the hands and built upon it.Even though the style I am going with here is very simple, child-like and closer to 'chibi' style (the girl in question is very young) you can still see the change from the blocked in shapes,in this case I've gone very rounded for her fist coming forward and a bit square for the top of her hand to her side and rounded for her thumb.

Using simple shapes to block in the general layout leaves me freedom to build on the shapes and change the positioning of things as I need.

@PlayerOne: Most tablets come with Adobe Photoshop elements so a good start would be to download elements before paying out the nose for the most recent photoshop. I mean there is torrenting so you could get Photoshop for free but I am neither endorsing nor condoning illegal downloading of the program Photoshop, really up to you. Good luck.